May be it's time for people to be against new things.
Open source I know is often a work of love, but it's a bit painful that everyone is chasing after new things instead of keeping things that already work working. It's like how there are dozens of js frameworks that have thousands of contributors whereas openssl had one which lead to the infamous heartbleed bug. We need to talk about how the culture of open source is broken in this regard and figure out how to fix it.
> It’s important to remember that when you start from scratch there is absolutely no reason to believe that you are going to do a better job
This is ridiculous. Maybe that's applicable in a very short timescale, but definitely not to the protocol which appeared in 1984.
There is a thing called progress, people invent quite a lot through the years: type systems, patterns, design ideas. Not to mention that hardware has changed quite a lot through the years: X11 was done in the age of terminals and absence of hardware acceleration.
Your last comment is a true statement but it isn't an argument. Just because X11 was done in the age of terminals and before gpus existed doesn't seem to support your point unless "old = bad" in your view. I understand how type systems can help, some patterns are good, but some of those ideas existed before X11 actually, so no period of time has a monopoly on good ideas.
Technical debt i.e. "code that should be refactored, because it was originally implemented in a hurry"? Yes, technically you're right and deleting all of the code is a way to also get rid of the code that should be refactored.
The same way whole-limb amputation is a very effective way to remove nail polish.
Trying out something new and fun is what you do in your free time. Working with decade-old legacy code is what you get paid huge amounts for and the reason you want to start from scratch in your free time.
I agree that this is not good overall, but it's going to be very hard to convince people to work on not-fun things for free. Some might see it more akin to volunteer work, but the amount of people willing to do this are far outnumbered by the people simply doing things for fun. Too be fair, it is at least pretty great in so far as that they're doing open-source work :)
Open source I know is often a work of love, but it's a bit painful that everyone is chasing after new things instead of keeping things that already work working. It's like how there are dozens of js frameworks that have thousands of contributors whereas openssl had one which lead to the infamous heartbleed bug. We need to talk about how the culture of open source is broken in this regard and figure out how to fix it.